Compound Portrait Series by Josh Bowe.

Who and where are you from?

My name is Josh Bowe. I'm from the UK, I am 44 years old, and have been a permanent resident of the UK since birth. Currently I lived in a small village in Mid Wales called Llansantffraid, which I use mainly as studio primarily, and a home secondly.

How you got into this

I got into art at a very young age I guess, probably well before i can remember, my parents said I was obsessed with drawing before I could speak. Painting and drawing have always played a primary role in my life, I don't think I've ever spent more than a week away from participating in either practice. As an adult I have always had the goal to become a full time artist, where my income was solely sourced from my artistic endeavours, the last three/four years i have been able to attain this goal.

What is your driving force?

I doubt I have one driving force in such a subjective cultural linchpin, but...... if I were to describe one over riding tenant that has stayed with me from my teenage years, that would be the notion that art actual requires no innate talent from its producer, the more you put into your practice, the quicker you improve. I recently read a quote from the actor Alan Alda about art and another cultural linchpin subject science - "Art requires rigour, and science requires creativity", for me this quote summarises wonderfully the true notion of what being an artist is. If you're not passionate about working at it, it's probably not for you.

What kind of work you do and why?

Currently my work is almost entirely focused on the human figure, and most significantly the portrait. I recently had a bit of an epiphany moment in my portrait studies, after being asked what my portraits are about. the best description I could muster is that I was more interested in finding character within my portraits, as opposed to the quite common notion of finding identity within portraits. For me faces designate more than someones identity, be it the artist, or the sitter. Faces communicate emotions quite competently, and these emotions are well comprehended by other humans, so I guess it could be argued that there are identifying aspects to faces that identify more than the persona of the artist or sitter. This line of enquiry has led my into doing some research on the subject of Physiognomy, which is the supposed art of judging character from facial characteristics. Although this is a subject matter with quite a long history, it has been rebuked quite heavily in recent history scientifically, but has had something of a revival through the research of Louis Corman, a French psychiatrist, whose research led him to believe that there were three core emotions well conveyed by humans through facial expression Warmth, Power, and Honesty.

Tell us more about Compound Portrait Series?

The compound portrait series is a very recent series I made using parallel pens to draw out and then using various wash techniques over the top once the sketch had been established in pen. I keep line studies of all of my sketches, as this is generally the most time consuming aspect to sketching for me, and for years now I've been over laying line sketches over the top of each other. I'd like to say there is a grand over arching narrative to the reasoning behind why I do this, but in reality there are more playful to me then something I can get precious about a singualr notion behind them. I'm very interested in cross sectioning portraits that would otherwise not have any relationship. quite often the results are jarring, but I find this adds to the line of inquiry more often than not. My plan now is to somehow manifest these sketches as larger scale oil paintings.

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